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Where Are We Now? Get Out The Map What were the problems with the Plunkitt approach to governance? Administrative decisions made for personal financial gain at public expense (corruption), staffing decisions made to reward political supporters rather than ability to achieve public objectives (nepotism and cronyism), distribution of services directed toward rewarding political support (favoritism), larger public problems not addressed (ineffectiveness): administrative process (delivering services, managing government) subordinate to political process (getting elected, connecting to voters). We want administration to be subordinate to politics (voice of the people, essence of democracy) but not to “politics,” which is concerned with perpetuating the terms of current office holders. Current alternative is customer service orientation, but that is not the only response and there have been others. The Goal: responsiveness without corruption, efficiency without unresponsiveness; reconciling bureaucracy and democracy.
Chapter 2 is about a century of efforts to define what public administration is and who practices it. Is public administration different from politics? Is public administration different from the management? These are really about the focus (or subject of study) of public administration. That debate is now complicated by the fact that all levels of government privatize some services, but continue to monitor them because they are still public services, and because all levels of government have devolved responsibility to nonprofit agencies, which are doing public work but not as government agencies. This is really about the locus, or institutional location, of public administration.
What is the relationship between public administration and political science and business administration? Is public administration separate from either of these? What does it have in common with them? Given those commonalities, does PA have its own distinct identity? Or is PA just a combination of political science and business administration, without any distinctive substance of its own? • What is the relationship between the theory and practice of public administration? Should it be devoted to helping practicing managers deal with everyday service delivery, or should be focus on larger theoretical questions? • What are the focus (subject matter) and locus (institutional setting) of PA? Is there a set of PA principles that belong only to public organizations? Are there nongovernmental organizations that are pursuing public objectives, and, if so, what does that mean for PA as a field? Answers to these questions change over time, which means that it is difficult to say precisely what PA is and what institutions it describes. • So, PA is an amorphous combination of Theory and Practice.
The first debate is the most explosive, for it boils down to this: what are we teaching you in public administration that you could not get in either political science or business? Political science will teach you all about democracy, how to make government responsive to various political constituencies, and how policies are made by elected officials. Business will teach you how to manage organizations and get things done. If those crucial subjects (democracy and management) are taught elsewhere, rather than taking courses in public administration, why not get a joint degree in political science and business? That is, is there something distinctive about public administration that does not derive from either political science or business? Why is it necessary to study the administration of public organizations? What makes the management of a public organization different from the management of a private organization, and what makes the bureaucrat different from the elected official?
To help clarify this problem, take a look at the excerpt on page 38 from the article by Luther Gulick on Roosevelt and Social Security. • How does the public administration perspective differs from the political perspective? • Is it enough to leave to politicians the sort of political sensitivity Gulick attributes Roosevelt? • What happens if bureaucrats become too politically sensitive?
School Closing Decision • What is the relationship between the criteria for selecting schools and the choice of which schools are closed? • How would a politician make the choice? • How would a bureaucrat make the choice?
What do I need to know from this chapter and why is it important? • In the history of American public administration, who believed that politics should be separated from administration? • What is POSDCORB? • Administrative science attempted to place public administration more clearly within the field of . . . • What three aspects distinguish public from private organizations? • What are the working differences between public administration and private management? • What current trends are forcing another rethinking of public administration?
